Electronic devices such as a personal computer have currently widely been distributed. An electronic device normally includes an input device for accepting an external instruction and a display device. A mouse, a touch pad or the like has conventionally widely been used as the input device. Patent Document 1 (Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2004-5105), Patent Document 2 (Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2004-5212), Patent Document 3 (Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2004-234504), and Patent Document 4 (Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2000-339097) each disclose an information processing apparatus including a touch pad combined with a display device.
An electronic device may cause its display device to display a plurality of menus such as a thumbnail of an image or a command menu. A user can use an input device to simultaneously select a plurality of menus among a plurality of displayed menus.
For example, in Windows® applications, the user can simultaneously select a plurality of menus by performing an operation as follows.
(1) The user selects a menu one by one while pressing a ctrl key. By performing this operation, menus selected while the ctrl key is being pressed are simultaneously selected.
(2) A start menu and an end menu are selected while a shift key is being pressed. By performing this operation, a menu lying between the start menu and the end menu is selected.
(3) Dragging is performed by using a mouse or a touch pad. By performing this operation, a menu in a drag region is selected.